


One Page of Fame

by reminiscence



Category: Death Note
Genre: Gen, Poetry, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, prose poetry, word count: 999-3000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: The tragic genius, the tragic actress, the tragic policeman and the tragic detective in the shadows... It's too bad they all end in tragedy, isn't it? But there's still the writer, and their tale is eternal.





	1. Light

He's the tragic genius as they say, the man who had fifteen minutes of fame but wound up taking half an hour and now he's a rose that's rotten to the core and there isn't a speck of pollen left to germinate another rosebush from

And that's such a shame because he was a one of a kind rose as well, or perhaps it's more accurate to say he's a two of a kind rose and the other of his kind is the rival he strove far too hard to beat and wound up cheating for – But then again they say all's fair in love and war and this is a bit of both because equals are so hard to find when you're at the top of the food chain and you've eaten everyone else

And he's become a hungry little carnivore growing too big for his boots or rather too big for his belt and little black book whose pages never seem to run out because that's how black holes work and he's long ago unknowingly opened one's door and now he feeds it until he's nothing but a stripped bare skeleton with a swollen stomach and sunken cheeks and eyes until he's so badly malnourished all the vitamins in the world aren't going to set him back straight

But the lines of the tale that lead to his tragedy were already written, in the first line of his script.


	2. Misa

She’s the tragic actress who fell in love with a man in the role of a martyr and paid the price, or that’s how her part of the script goes, the part they air to the public. The rest of it’s the secret script that you can only unlock if you’ve met the right conditions through the game except no-one ever does because real life’s a game where there’s only one shot and that one shot’s never enough to get it all –

So she’s the tragic princess whose prince doesn’t come back to water her roots and so she wilts and dies off and there’s no little seed to sprout after her. She’s the princess who has a portrait in some lonely museum hall where people wander past and ooh and aah and then go on with their lives like she’s a floating exhibit being phased out well after her time…

And sure she has her fans but all stars do and human memories aren’t a lasting thing. Some leave stains. Most don’t and she dances to the back of their minds until she’s gone for good and the new wind’s blown in and she was on her way out the moment she stepped onto the stage and those people don’t even see the bloody glory stage of her finale –

And, probably, those who have the finale burned into their mind are the ones who scrubbed it clean from the earth.


	3. Soichiro

He’s the tragic chief of police that went down in a blaze of glory, or that’s what they all assume it is until the secret true ending comes out and the farce is revealed. His death isn’t a blaze of glory after all but a smoking cigarette bud crushed underfoot and forgotten about like all other cigarette buds except the ones that set fires and this one doesn’t set a fire. It doesn’t quench one either.

There’s a spectacle when the truth comes out and there’s the final scene but this tragic chief of police is barely a passing mention in it. He’s a leaf that’s already blown off the tree, a refuse that’s been left to rot and melted into the asphalt until it’s a stain and barely that and he was a bright glowing man before: solid and good and isn’t that the kind of man we want to live forever? Instead, his model is in mind and out of sight and that’s splattered in heart attacks and gunshots and betrayal and blood and who will recall his legacy amidst it all? He’s a man who lived for something but died for nothing, the tragic chief of police whose ascension and fall were both pawn sacrifices and forgotten in the larger scheme of the bored –

But at least he got a burial and a tombstone, which is more than some of those other pawns.


	4. L

He is the tragic detective with many masks and few of them know those masks and fewer still know the man beneath and that’s the greatest tragedy of them all. He’s a name that’ll live forever and be stained and coloured and it was never pure white or pure black to begin with but that’s just a name, a title, a suit of clothes or a crown passed down and down and the world forgets who wore it in the past and only recalls the face of now, if even that.

He’s the tragic detective who’s a person and that person is forgotten: his beginning and his middle and his end. The entire biography is just blank pages and they’ll write falsehoods and tall tales attempting to fill in the blanks and they’ll fail because there are far too many blanks when those who replaced him have coloured in the truth for their own means as well and the others are not there. He’s the ultimate rival for a killer who is likewise immortalised and forgotten but the killer succeeds him and so he is lost in the spiral of time as the loser of their little game where only the winner stands supreme and even that winner loses later on. It’s a tournament setup and there’s a king somewhere but they haven’t reached that part yet; they’re still in the preliminary rounds after all no matter what they thought of themselves: pawns who thought they could be gods and there are no gods in this game, only the winning kind –

And it was a hard-fought match but he lost eventually, he lost anyway and was forgotten along with all the other losers in that place… Or so he should have gone, but to most, he shouldn’t have existed at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, d3 - poetry collection with contains poems on multiple characters or scenes


End file.
